Most conventional clippers for grooming animals incorporate an electric motor within a casing for driving the clipper blades. These blades constitute a clipper blade assembly wherein there are provided stationary blade teeth and movable blade teeth, the movable blade teeth having a small receiving cavity for a finger which is caused to oscillate back and forth and thereby effect relative movement between the blades. Such a blade assembly can be received in an appropriate clipper blade assembly holder provided on the casing itself. The manner of attaching and detaching such blade assemblies to a clipper in a proper position such that a driving finger can be received in an appropriate cavity to drive the movable clipper blade teeth is well known in the art. Usually, the rotation of the motor shaft in the casing is converted through appropriate helical gears into an oscillating motion of the drive finger to thereby drive the blades.
As a consequence of the foregoing configuration, the clipper after prolonged use can become heated not only as a consequence of the presence of the motor itself in the casing but also because of heat developed in the driving of the gear train to oscillate the blades. The developed heat as well as the general bulk of the clipper as a result of having to move the motor with the clipper itself makes it difficult for a person to use the clipper for prolonged periods. Further, in order to resist the developed heat, such prior art clippers have had to have a specially designed plastic type casing material which is heat resistant. Unfortunately, this type of material is subject to shattering should the clipper be inadvertently dropped.
In order to minimize the foregoing disadvantages, the motor carried within the clipper casing has been made as small and as light as is practical. While improvement is achieved by using a small and light motor, there is a sacrifice in the power available to drive the clipper blades and under a load such as a heavy coat of hair to be sheared, the oscillation frequency of the blades can be slowed considerably, thereby making the cutter less efficient. Moreover, after prolonged use, the gear train arrangement for converting the rotary motion of the motor to the oscillating motion required to drive the cutter blades become worn and as a result the overall amplitude of oscillation decreases. Such decrease in amplitude even though slight again reduces the efficiency of the cutting action.